Is Twitter the Newest Form of Literature?
>> MIKE: Here’s an idea: The tweet is the newest form of literature. theme Ah, Twitter, everyone’s favorite microblogging platform. A place where the social media elite can trade links to obscure tumblogs. Where you can read what your former co-worker’s girlfriend had for lunch. Where you can profess your undying love for the Biebs. And where you can become involved in a nascent and highly constrained brand of literary experimentation. ding wha? Yes, I know, it sounds a little weird, but think about it. If you use Twitter you’ve probably agonized over the construction of a tweet. You can’t just say whatever you want and go all willy nilly with your character count. There are rules here. Well, actually, there’s kind of only one rule. Twitter’s one hundred and forty character limit forces you to be creative in your tweet construction. [violins playing] “Each time Mark made advances towards Marie, she’d immediately pretend she was asleep. This made for awkward office lunches.” The relationship between constraint and creativity is like peanut butter and jelly, like ToeJam and Earl, like John Wu and doves. flapping ding Self imposed, technologically determined, or culturally developed, constraint is oftentimes the very basis of creativity. Filmmaker Orson Welles even said that the absence of limitation is the enemy of art. The sonnet, still life, ballet, the sonata are all forms which are based on essentially arbitrary rules. A perfect, simple, and practical expression of artistic constraint is the haiku, which when you think about it actually has a lot in common with the tweet. Both are social forms meant to provide insight and be shared. Both are meant to stand alone independently of other haikus or tweets. They have extreme limitations placed upon their length. And the best examples of each have a kind of turn that offers the reader a compelling insight. singing In haiku it’s called kireji, a place of emphasis which outlines the structure of the poem and where disparate ideas often come together. How cool the feeling of a wall against the feet siesta. We don’t really have an equivalent to the kireji in English but some of the best tweet makers use argueably a very similar construction. playing Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly. One day Justin Bieber will turn forty and we’ll all go, “I can’t believe Justin Bieber is forty,” except some of us will be dead. But Twitter isn’t the only place that writers are experimenting with creative constraints online. Oh, no, no. With so many little text entry boxes ready for creative expression, status update literature is a perfectly modern format available to anyone to both create and to read. Respected author Rick Moody wrote a story on Twitter about a date to Coney Island. There has already been a Facebook novel. Not a novel about Facebook, but a novel written using Facebook. There is even a Gchat status novel in the works. Sure, it’s easy to challenge the legitimacy of a story constructed in something as seemingly fleeting as a set of status updates, but... ding As poet William Carlos Williams said, poetry is a machine pruned to a perfect economy. And that’s double extra true when you only have a hundred forty characters or less. What do you guys think? Can you write Twitter literature or... Twitterature? Let us know in the comments and if you like clicking buttons there’s a really good one right here, you should click it. Please subscribe. Holy flurking shnit, the Bronies episode was by far our most commented episode. So first of all, twenty-five thousand subscribers? That is insane. Thank you. And welcome Bronies. Let’s see what you guys had to say: athiyah and a group of up voters wanted us to get some brohoof action going, so ready? Here it is: brohoof. Zoot101 makes a point that people might not dislike Bronies because they’re challenging masculinity, but because they’re really effusive about their love of My Little Pony. Which is a fair point. In case you haven’t already checked them out, there are really great discussions about the Brony community on both Equestria Daily and Know Your Meme. We’ll place some links in the description. Vaati1980 quotes Miyazaki who said, “In order to grow your audience, you must betray their expectations.” Love it. TraytonMoyer brings up a very relevant XKCD comic, but then again, when isn’t XKCD relevant? EternalChaosBringer actually has some really good advice for pretty much everyone. He says it’s okay to not like things, just don’t be a dick about the things you don’t like. Professed Bronie JoeM007 is concerned that we have maybe dragged him into a battle that he’s not prepared to fight. Which is fair but unfortunately Joe, you can’t really stand still on a moving train. One thing that we didn’t get to talk about is the female contingent of Bronies called Pegasisters. shadowyoshigamernerd, a Pegasister, chimes in and says that she doesn’t think Bronies are changing what is considered manly but rather what defines a man. Which is nuanced, but really interesting. And in case you guys haven’t noticed, we’ll see you next week. Because you’re awesome. theme Category:English Category:Complete